Boy…a lot of ground to cover here, and, sorry don't have time to sort through everything, but, a few things…and, of course I always get carried away :~) …
Someone wanted a PFD of the original Rifkin which I can supply ..how would I do that?
Just noting, the Hemfling interview was in the 80s, so, he may have just picked up the restorers lingo himself by then…
Lt. Hogan is my last choice for authoritative reference…he is I think what we would call a "flack" for the QMC , okay, public relations specialist. But his job is to make QMC look as good as possible. Indeed, when the Quartermaster General is doing his best to denigrate the Bantam accomplishments in a gratuitous letter of criticism he lifts one of Hogans' lines right out of one of Hogans journal articles right in the letter without attribution. Guessing the letter was drafted by Hogan, especially given that Gregory wasn't in the position long enough to know what happened in Butler and no one form QMC had ever even been to Butler except Brown the engineer.
Anyway..in both places he is making the claim that the Bantam was "developed" at Holabird which is a bunch of …well, not true by any evidence I am able to find. The QMC, through Bob Brown, did what it was supposed to do, help spec the car in co-operation with the contractor. And yes, there is no doubt that various people in the Army QMC, Infantry what have you, had been thinking about the problem of a small recon car for quite a while…but, the May 23 meeting went by with the question of what to replace the half ton or the motorcycle with " left in abeyance"…Nobody mentioned ANYTHING jeep like at this big review of all vehicles.
The fact is, the QMC had to be dragged to Butler and went only because Bantam's Harry Payne had gone to the Secretary of War himself (Woodring) and Woodring, having been Asst Sec War for procurement for eight yeas prior to being Secretary, knew the QMC inside out. He read them the riot act and told them to get down to Butler and get this car thing going. At that QMC sent only one guy, a civilian contractor (Brown) or, maybe there was an officer who left the first day...with orders to deep six Bantam as soon as possible. However, the overall committee was impressed with Bantam presentation, and Brown was impressed with Crist, so they got to work. Whatever the ideas about the car were, no one came to the meeting (including Payne) with any drawings or history of a previous car…the seminal drawing is made on Fenns' desk by Beasley (Ordnance) drawing up what they had all discussed. That is the "cocktail napkin drawing" and the first thing that could be called a "conception" of the jeep.
After they left, Harold Crist at Bantam was laying out the car and sourcing the essential parts. Brown and Crist and Fenn worked hand in glove getting the specs and drawings together, and Crist was intimately familiar with every aspect of the specs, and made changes to the drawing that Captain Engler had made at Holabird (and which included many obvious elements of the Bantam civilian cars). What Crist could not sell was a realistic horsepower figure for the performance envelope asked for. QMC would not budge. Blame it on the Infantry for insisting on low weight, or the QMC for going along with it (or setting Bantam up (and Infantry) for failure by asking for an impossible to build car)..but it was Bantam's courage in ignoring the specs and going for the performance that made the jeep. Keep in mind the car described in the bid specs IS NOT a jeep because no jeep until the Suzuki LJ10 in 1972 weighed 1275 pounds.
And of course the actual bid PLANS, (not spec drawings, handed in on July 5, but the Probst drawings from which an actual car could be built) were entirely a Bantam product with absolutely NO QMC input. (And by the way they originally included a Hercules Engine 1 ci smaller than the Willys..but the low weight spec forced them to the lighter Continental while Ford and Willys could use heavier engines for some unknown reason). There is no evidence whatsoever that there were ANY QMC personnel in Butler during the build in Butler, so that part which is clearly the most difficult is 100% Bantam.
Anyway, add it all up and weight the value of each element and if you are generous you can give "the Army" 10 or 20% credit of the finished project, so, as far as I am concerned, Hogan can go soak his head saying it is a Holabird project. (Holabird CO Maj Lawes himself says he wishes it had been!) And, frankly Rifkin, also a QMC hagiographer begins his treatise by claiming that the year or was it year and a half long procurement was the most "spectacular" accomplishment of QMC..even after they had the best weapon of the war handed to them on a sliver platter in September of 1940. Indeed, OPM got so tired of them fiddling around they just took the whole thing away from them and put it out to competitive bid. Keep in mind, if it is up to QMC WWII would have featured Ford GPs…
What DOES interest me about Hogan, and is hinted at here with the 1938 date…Was there a 1937 Bantam jeep? In one of his articles he mentions such a project at Bantam…it is easy to over look i and think he is talking about 1940…but no it is 1937. But, this is only 3 years before…so why is there no mention of it at all, or any left over drawings or the car or parts of it or anything..even a picture…when the 1940 events happen. W-O SUREKY would have trotted out any evidence of such a project in the FTC hearing if they had any knowledge of it…If there was qa 1937 Bantam, this one would have been built by Harry Miller..the the worlds 4 wheel drive expert who had raced 4WD at Indianapoplis in 1932... Anyway, Hogan says that no, it wasn't Americas greatest automotive engineer who had anything to do with it..it was all don at Holabird. Right. "We could'a had 'em any day, so the Federales say...
S